This xkcd is what finally resolved the "is it us or natural variation" question for me: https://xkcd.com/1732/
this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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It's always the rate of change.
I remember a few years ago people arguing the temperatures have changed before and that theres billions spent on climate change and it's all propaganda.
They wouldn't listen to the rate of change argument then or acknowledge the trillions spent in industries causing climate change. I'm not sure they've changed their minds still ( I refused to engage them any further) but this is the challenge - so many people believe what they want to believe and don't want the hard truth.
A lot of people love rationalising their own beliefs but hate reasoning out what's right and wrong. It makes me lose faith in humanity.
A lot? We all need to be aware that we are able to hold on to faulty beliefs. We are only human.
Especially now with the amount of fake news
The Inconvenient Truth. That was so aptly named. Humans will do anything for the sake of convenience and climate change is quite inconvenient. Maybe if we make burning up the planet MORE inconvenient then it will change. Ridiculous taxes for carbon output sounds nice. Those tax dollars then spent on cloud seeding for the short term and carbon capture for the long term.
God bless Randall Munroe
We've entered the 'this is the new normal now, get used to it' phase.
"climate change is real, but it's too late so why change anything now?"
Maybe we should do something about it but there's nothing we can do.
I notice more and more people trying to push us into stage 4 - "Maybe there was something we could have done but it's too late now" - just so we can put all of the uncomfortable guilt behind us.
When there is no way to stop it, then the only thing left to do is exact brutal justice on the ones most responsible.
If a group of college students in 1985 could make a highly-trained riot police force cry "FALL BACK! FALL BACK!" with shit in their pants and the fear of God in their eyes, all because the construction of an airport was screwing over a small farming community a bit east of Tokyo... Then one can only imagine what the entire fucking world could do in retribution of its own destruction, to a group of inhumane ghouls who could all comfortably fit on a single Boeing 747.
They try to divide us with negacionist agenda
This meme forgot to include when BP started pushing the 'Carbon Footprint' propaganda, to offset blame from corporations onto regular folk.
Don't disagree with this at all, just noting that the start of that line could be stretched much further back, we have known that human consumption of coal was having/would have a detrimental impact on climate for well over 100 years 1856, 1902, 1912
source
Sadly in that timeline, profit has always mattered more than humanity (or the planet).
Still does.
Stage 1: "Climate change is my responsibility to fix as an average citizen!"
Stage 2: "Actually, fixing climate change is the responsibility of the megacorporations responsible for it."
Stage 3: "Climate change is my responsibility to fix as an average citizen!" (said while researching sabotage and mutual aid)
Except instead of oops it's 'the world is going to end anyway, so why not burn more oil?'
The mastermind behind all this must be building fallout vault-like structures to allow people to survive the planet when all is said and done. They will rule the world in the end, perform experiments, whatever they want.
The timeline for the earth to cool back off is a hundred thousand years. A bit too long to wait out in a bunker.
I actually got a long ad on YouTube recently for luxury bunkers equipped with everything to go on for decades no matter what's going on outside. So yeah, that's a business now.
What the hell is a luxury bunker?
Gold plated vault doors? Red carpet? Fancy mini bar soaps?
Lol. You think don't deny climate change today? Hawaii was bound to burn, and it had nothing to with climate change. (Just read the headline...)
They are going to kill us while trying to rob us of the vocabulary that explains how and why.
Now we're in the "take your Xanax while daddy Bill Gates fixes everything for you" phase.
I literally never heard that at all. Maybe it's American thing?
What really sucks is that we are penalizing newer, greener technologies in order to prop up older non-profitable technologies.
There is a huge subsidy in the US for coal power plants. That needs to wind down, preferably in the next 4 years.
A few states charge higher registration fees for hybrid and electric vehicles, while at the same time suppressing or almost eliminating the gas tax during post-pandemic inflation.
Certain groups are dead set on boiling the the frog here, without even realizing that they are a lobster in the same pot of water.
The worst part is that renewables and EVs are generally just better in every way.
Just because they don't go vroom vroom, a majority of the population don't like them.
Inb4 some idiot goes "but it takes metal mined from places and shipped across the ocean to make Teslas!!!"
Like your Ford Raptor is sustainably grown and harvested in small-plot ecologically friendly mom and pop truck farms....
Where are we now?
Missing section: "OK its real and man made, but the fix is too inconvenient"
“This is because you didn’t recycle enough!”
I'll admit it, it was me. I mixed my paper with plastic. Sorry everyone.
You doomed us! DOOMED!
FFFFFFF
Won't someone please just once consider the profits
Stuck in traffic huffing Exxon's fumes.
psfu
It took me a while to get this
I still don't get it. Can you explain?
ooPSFUck
Alright, evidently sometimes a joke is still really funny even when you have to explain it!
My personal human timeline:
-
End of dark ages up to industrial revolution: Wow, people are getting pretty dang smart, things are looking good for humanity.
-
Industrial revolution up to present: Well, on second thought...
I don't care if it is caused by humans or natural causes ( and it's likely both). The issue is that it's a problem, because we've evolved to live in a cool environment (relative to wherever this is going). Part of responsibly using this planet we find ourselves on is terraforming it to sustainably and efficiently suit our needs. I support decarbonization because it helps. But due to other natural factors effecting our environment for the worse (as far as we as a species are concerned), we will need to take more artificial measures to cool the planet in the future.
But the first step is decarbonization. We have two choices - accept natural inefficiencies and extreme conditions, and slowly lose our intelligence in exchange for resilience (evolutionary "crabification"), or terraform the planet to a constant, efficient environment to continue developing as an intelligence.
We are caught, environmentally, in a neutral zone between extreme fluctuations that will continue until the earth cools entirely from its formation. We did not exist during the last extreme. And if we do not prevent the next, our species will not survive.
No, this timeline started with “Shit, our calculations show that we might ruin the world in just a few decades at this rate. Oh, well. Probably best not to mention this to anyone.”
Do you think they're thinking "we'll be dead before things get really bad and fuck our kids" or "if we make our families super wealthy they'll be feudal lords after civilization collapses"?
There's no oops or fuck about it. They are gleefully driving us off the cliff like Thelma and Louise with conservatives cheering the whole way down.
The best we can hope for is to exact some form of harsh justice before nature has its way with them. We are already dead either way. Will they die in luxury or will they die in the streets with the rest of us?